IBM PVU Out-Of-Date Inventory Report

FlexNet Manager Suite 2022 R1 (On-Premises)

The IBM PVU Out-Of-Date Inventory report lists devices that, because of previous inventory reports, are linked to IBM PVU licenses, but have not reported inventory within the period you select.

Generating the report

  1. Navigate to Reports > Discovery & Inventory > Inventory > IBM PVU Out-Of-Date Inventory.
  2. Choose the period to check for incoming inventory from devices consuming from IBM PVU licenses. Either:
    • Choose one of the periods listed in the drop-down for Has not reported inventory in over...; or
    • Select Custom date range. This displays two date pickers where you may specify your chosen from and to dates
  3. Optionally, limit your search to inventory devices that are owned by one or more enterprise groups:
    1. Click on the edit icon in the field after Enterprise group. A search panel appears.
    2. In the middle of the panel, choose your type of enterprise group by clicking the appropriate tab (Locations, Corporate units, or Cost centers). The search is limited to names in the group type you select.
    3. In Enterprise title (at the top of the panel), type all or part of the name of the group you want to find, and click Search. Matches appear in the listing at the bottom of the panel. If the list of matches is long, it may stretch over multiple pages (rather than showing a scroll bar).
    4. In the list of returned results, click the selection box next to the group(s) to include. As you select each one, a matching tile appears in the Selected items box. (If you selected a group in error, deselect it again, or click the x on the right end of its tile to remove it from the Selected items.) Selected groups also appear above the search panel, in the Enterprise group field.
    5. Repeat to add extra enterprise groups, even of mixed types. If you select multiple enterprise groups, inventory devices in each group are checked in turn (that is, the search is a logical-OR). It is not possible to create a search for inventory devices that are both in a location like Australia AND in a corporate unit like Marketing.
    6. When satisfied with your choice of enterprise groups, click in the Enterprise group field to close the search panel.
  4. Click Run report.

Reading the report

The following columns (listed alphabetically) are available in this list. By default, some are available through the column chooser.

Clearly, most of the following data is as last reported, before the failure of inventory reporting.

Column name Description
Assigned user

The user assigned to this inventory device. This assignment overrides the Calculated user.

Calculated user

The name of the most frequent user of this device, over the previous 10 inventory collections.

Chassis number

The manufacturer's chassis number reported for the device.

Clock speed (MHz)

The maximum clock speed (in MHz) of the processor that is installed in the inventory device.

Compliance status
The compliance status of an inventory device. It can have any of the following values:
  • ChangedIndicates a change in the compliance status of an inventory device. This value is changed automatically when the following conditions are met:
    • The inventory device has a linked asset.
    • You have defined the device compliance settings to track any changes in the hardware properties of this device.
    • There is a change in the hardware properties for which the device compliance settings have been defined. This change can be manual or a result of a new inventory import.
  • CompliantThe inventory details reported in the last inventory import match those of previous imports, or any changes to those details have been approved. For details about reviewing or approving changes to assets, see Viewing and Accepting the Changes to a Device Asset
  • NewThe default value for all newly imported devices. This value is not changed until there is a change in the hardware configuration or an asset is linked to this device.
  • Not trackedIndicates that the device is no longer tracked for compliance. This may happen when an inventory import leads to a duplicate device record with some change in its properties.
Cores

The total number of processor cores available in a physical inventory device; or the number of cores assigned to an inventory device that is a virtual machine.

Corporate unit

The corporate unit responsible for the inventory device.

Cost center

The cost center responsible for all costs incurred for this inventory device.

Created
The date when this inventory record was created in FlexNet Manager Suite.
Tip: New inventory device records are created during a full import to the compliance database, as new inventory is identified. Therefore it's quite possible to have a creation date that is later than the inventory date, with the difference being due to scheduling, such as the scheduling of imports from third-party tools, or delays between the upload of FlexNet inventory and the full import and compliance calculations (for example, if your full imports are scheduled weekly, or the like).
Creation method
The method used to create the inventory device record. The possible values:
  • Automatic — the inventory device was discovered in incoming inventory
  • Manual — the inventory device was manually created
  • VM Host — the inventory device is a virtual machine that was discovered while taking inventory of a host server.
Disk (GB)

The total space of all hard drives installed on the inventory device, in Gigabytes.

Display adapters

The total number of display adapters installed in the inventory device.

Domain name
The name of the domain to which the computing device belongs.
Tip: Records fabricated for special purposes display special values:
  • A dummy device record created for imports through your connector to Flexera SaaS Manager displays flexera.com
  • A record representing an Oracle Database running in Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) shows the full DNS alias (excluding the actual machine name), such as
    clv8xj7busyg.eu-west-1.rds.amazonaws.com
Frequent inventory scans enabled

Indicates whether high frequency (30-minute) hardware inventory and virtualization scans are enabled for locally-installed FlexNet inventory agents to run.

In general, because you are running in high-frequency mode, this column displays Yes for most (if not all) of the devices listed. Any inventory device that displays a No in this column may be outside the targets that authorize sub-capacity calculations. Best practice is to use the built-in target All devices consuming IBM PVU points, as this is updated daily to include every inventory device consuming from an IBM PVU license. This target can be selected in the IBM reporting and archiving settings section of Inventory Settings.

Alternative targets are defined as part of Discovery and Inventory Rules; but since these require manual maintenance, you risk accidentally excluding some otherwise eligible devices from sub-capacity calculations.

Hard drives

The total number of hard drives installed in the inventory device.

Host

The name of the host server where this VM is a guest.

Hosted in

Shows whether the inventory device is on-premises (the default, meaning the device is within your enterprise), or in a cloud operated by a particular service provider. For some cloud service providers (like AWS and Azure), the Hosted in value is set automatically through inventory. For other cloud service providers, you must make a selection manually.

Inventory chassis type

The chassis type for an inventory device, as reported by the inventory process.

Inventory device type
Specifies the type of the inventory device, which may be any of the following values:
  • Cluster — A cluster of several computers, typically managed by Kubernetes and with consumption reported by the IBM License Service (which does not allow for further breakdown, for example to individual hosts or VMs within the cluster)
  • Computer — A computing device like a desktop, laptop, workstation, or a non-virtualized server.
  • Mobile device — A mobile device like a tablet or smart phone.
  • Product — Not a device type, but a pseudo-value used only in IBM VPC licenses to identify rows showing the licensed IBM product. This value may appear only if the Bundle consumption rules (in the license properties Use Rights & Rules tab, under License consumption rules) have the option Consume for each product on a device selected.
  • Remote Device — The device is a remote device (not appearing in inventory) known to have accessed virtualized applications. This value is created automatically.
  • VDI Template — The VDI template used to create the virtual desktop instance that was accessed from an inventory device (see Virtual Desktop Templates). This value is created automatically.
  • Virtual Machine — A virtual machine running on a physical host machine. A physical host can run multiple virtual machines using virtualization technologies from VMWare, Oracle, Microsoft, and so on. Note that this value is also used for a record fabricated to represent an Oracle Database running on Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS).
  • VM Host — A physical virtual host running one or more virtual machines using any virtualization technology, such as VMWare.
IP address

The IP address of the inventory device. For inventory devices with multiple IP addresses (for example, those with multiple network cards), a comma-separated list (up to 256 characters) is shown. IP addresses in the IPv6 address family are not reported in FlexNet inventory for devices running UNIX-like operating systems.

Last inventory date

The date and time when inventory was last reported for this device. Normally, this is the last upload of FlexNet inventory from the locally-installed FlexNet inventory agent. However, if this device happens to be reported in multiple inventory sources, and one of the non-FlexNet inventory sources is still reporting this device, then this date may be less helpful for diagnosis.

Last logged on user

The name of the user that was discovered to be the last logged on user on this device.

Linked asset

The name of an asset to which the device is linked.

Location

The location within your enterprise that is responsible for the device.

MAC address
The Media Access Control (MAC) address of the inventory device. If a device has multiple network interface cards, this field displays a comma-separated list of MAC addresses.
Tip: This field is deliberately empty for discovered device records created automatically by the Amazon connector to represent installations of Oracle Database within Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS).
Model

The manufacturer’s model name or number for this device.

Network cards

The total number of network cards installed in a physical inventory device; or the number of network cards accessible by the virtual machine.

Name
The name of the inventory device. The compliance calculation updates this field with the machine name returned in inventory (matched by several properties, including serial number).
Tip: The name displays as Flexera SaaS Manager if this is a dummy device record created for imports from your Flexera SaaS Manager connector.
Operating system
The operating system running on this device.
Tip: This value may be blank because:
  • The device is recently discovered – the operating system can only occasionally be populated during first discovery, and is often backfilled once inventory is returned for this device.
  • The device is a VM host that is a hardware frame that may not be running its own operating system. In this case, the computer Name field is set to a serial number associated with the hardware (because, without an operating system, there is no host name). In fact, no inventory of any kind is possible without an operating system, so FlexNet Manager Suite synthesizes the VM host record from common data reported by its guest VMs. The virtual machines in these cases may typically be partitions like:
    • LPARs running on IBM PowerPC servers
    • Solaris zones on either x86 or SPARC architectures
    • nPar or vPar partitions running on HP Integrity servers.
Out-of-date reason

Displays linked text describing whether inventory scans are enabled and, if possible, the reason they are out-of-date.

Partial number of processors

The equivalent number of full-time 'processors' set by the time-sharing controls on the hardware console. These 'processors' are vCPUs, and this corresponds to the maximum number of cores that may be used by the virtual machine. Some virtualization technologies (such as on IBM's AIX operating system) report this setting in inventory. You may override an incorrect inventory value for this field.

Pool

The name given to the pool of resources to which this virtual machine belongs.

Processor type

The type of processor installed in the inventory device.

Processors

The total number of processors installed in a physical inventory device, or logical processors assigned to a virtual machine.

RAM (GB)

The size of Random Access Memory (RAM) installed in the inventory device, in gigabytes.

Role

The role assigned to the inventory device, such as Development, Test, and Production. Device roles (where permitted by the product use rights on a license) can exempt devices from consuming entitlements on a license to which they are (and remain) attached. For example, some license agreements may grant an exemption for devices used exclusively for testing. For more details, see Exemptions.

Serial number
The serial number of the device, attempting to uniquely identify either the hardware (for a stand-alone device) or the virtualization container (for a virtual machine), as reported in inventory.
Tip: This displays Flexera SaaS Manager with a numerical suffix in the special case where the inventory device is a dummy record created for linking with imports through your Flexera SaaS Manager connector.
Service pack

The service pack number or ID reported by the operating system.

Sockets

The total number of mounting sockets for central processing units (CPUs) available in a physical inventory device. For a Virtual machine, this may be the number of virtual sockets assigned to the VM.

Threads

The total number of threads available in a physical inventory device; or the number of logical processors (virtual processors in a virtual machine, or threads assigned to a partition) assigned to an inventory device that is a virtual machine.

VM name
The name of the inventory device. The compliance calculation updates this field with the machine name returned in inventory (matched by several properties, including serial number).
Tip: The name displays as Flexera SaaS Manager if this is a dummy device record created for imports from your Flexera SaaS Manager connector.
VM type

The type of the virtual machine.

FlexNet Manager Suite (On-Premises)

2022 R1